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Victoria's Secret
Victoria's Secret is an American retailer of women's wear, lingerie and beauty products. It is the largest brand and a segment of publicly traded Limited Brands with sales surpassing $7 billion and an operating income of US$1 billion in 2006. Victoria's Secret is known for its fashion shows and catalogues, which feature top fashion models. History Victoria's Secret was started in San Francisco, California in 1977 by Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus Roy Raymond businessman Roy Raymond,http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEFD9123CF931A3575AC0A965958260accessed 2008-01-31. who felt embarrassed trying to purchase lingerie for his wife in a public and awkward department store environment. He opened the first store at Stanford Shopping Center, and quickly followed it with a mail order catalog and 3 other stores. The stores were meant to create a comfortable environment for men, with wood-paneled walls, Victorian details and helpful sales staff. Instead of racks of bras and panties in every size, there were single styles, paired together and mounted on the wall in frames. Men could browse for styles and then sales staff would help estimate the appropriate size, pulling from inventory in the back. In 1982, after 5 years of operations, Roy Raymond sold the company to The Limited. The Limited kept the personalized image of Victoria's Secret intact. Victoria's Secret was rapidly expanded into the America's malls throughout the 1980s. The company was able to vend a widened range of products such as shoes, evening wear, perfumes among others with its mail catalog issued eight times annually. By the early 1990s, Victoria's Secret had become the largest American lingerie retailer topping one billion dollars. On 10 July, 2007, Limited Brands sold 75% of Limited clothing chain to firm Sun Capital Partners to focus and boost sales growth on Victoria's Secret lingerie stores and Bath & Body Works units, which provided 72% of revenue in 2006 and almost all the firm's profit.http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/234059thestar.com. Retrieved July 23, 2007. Marketing Strategy Victoria's Secret is a specialty retailer of women's intimate apparel. It has about 1,000 Victoria's Secret lingerie stores and 100 independent Victoria's Secret Beauty Stores in the US, mostly in shopping centres. It sells brassieres, panties, hosiery, cosmetics, sleepwear, and more. Victoria's Secret mails more than 400 million of its catalogs per year. Under pressure from environmentalist groups, Victoria's Secret's parent firm and a conservation group have reached an agreement to make the lingerie retailer's catalog more environmentally friendly in 2006. The catalogue will no longer be made of pulp supplied from any woodland caribou habitat range in Canada, unless it has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The catalogs will also be made of 10 percent recycled paper from post-consumer waste.Victoria's Secret catalogue no longer in pulp frictionwww.cbc.ca. Retrieved September 20, 2007. Victoria's Secret is now building its image with a fairly conservative, middle-class shopper in mind and avoided any connotations of sleaziness which lingerie might carry.http://www.bookrags.com/history/victorias-secret-sjpc-05/bookrags.com. Retrieved July 25, 2007. The company gained notoriety in the early 1990s after it began to use supermodels in its advertising and fashion shows. Throughout the past decade, it refused to follow the celebrity trend, turning down at least one celebrity a month begging to model the brand.The World's Top-Earning ModelsForbes. Retrieved on 2007-06-16. Victoria's Secret makes use of a rigorous customer service model, stressing upselling, frequent staff attention, and signing customers up for a credit card called "the angel card". This credit card has a standard interest rate of 22.8 percenthttp://www.financeglobe.com/Finance/card893.phpFinance Globe. Retrieved on 2008-04-02., and provides discounts for frequent shoppers in the way of coupons by mail and free merchandise. This card is backed by the World Financial Network National Bank[ https://onlineaccess.mycreditcard.cc/victoriassecret?Action=FAQ.jsp#tcc]Limited Brands. Retrieved on 2008-04-02. Employees are given working hours based on how many applications they attempt to process per hour, whether the attempt is successful or not is not considered. Victoria's Secret Angels Victoria's Secret Angels are the brand's most visible models and spokeswomen. The VS Angels made their début in 1999 in the fourth annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Maria Inés Rivero, Daniela Pestova, Adriana Lima, Laetitia Casta, Heidi Klum, Rebecca Romijn, and Tyra Banks are among the "Angels" from the original promotion.Advertising Mascots - People - Victoria's Secret Angels tvacres.com. Retrieved September 22,2007. In May 2007, the Victoria's Secret Angels which includes Adriana Lima, Heidi Klum, Selita Ebanks, Alessandra Ambrosio, Miranda Kerr, Izabel Goulart and Karolina Kurkova were chosen to be part of People Magazine's annual "100 Most Beautiful People in the World". "The Models of Victoria's Secret", People. Retrieved on 2007-05-11. The 'Angels' are among the world's best-paid models. On November 13, 2007, Victoria's Secret Angels became the first trademark awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Victoria's Secret angels on Walk of Famesource: Mainichi Daily News. Retrieved November 14, 2007. Angels Current (In Order By Last Name) * Lily Aldridge - (2010- present) * Taylor Hill - (2015- present) * Elsa Hosk - (2015- present) * Martha Hunt - (2015- present) * Adriana Lima - (2000- present)Meet the World's Luckiest Plane source:okmagazine.com. Retrieved November 7, 2007. * Stella Maxwell (2015- present) * Behati Prinsloo (2009- present) * Lais Riberio (2015 - present) * Sara Sampaio (2015 - present) * Josephine Skriver (2016- present) * Romee Strijd (2015 - present) * Candice Swanepoel (2009 - present) * Jasmine Tookes (2015 - present) Former * Helena Christensen - (1998) * Heidi Klum - (1997 - 2010) * Alessandra Ambrosio - (2004 - 2017) * Karolina Kurkova - (1999 - 2009) * Selita Ebanks (2005 - 2008) CBS Specials: Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2005source:CBS.com. Retrieved November 8,2007. * Izabel Goulart - (2005 - 2008) * Miranda Kerr - (2006 - 2012) * Marisa Miller - (2007-2010) * Rebecca Romijn - (1998) * Karen Mulder - (1998 - 1999) * Stephanie Seymour - (1998 - 1999) * Daniela Pestova - (1998 - 2003) * Tyra Banks - (1998 - 2005) * Laetitia Casta - (1999) * Maria Inés Rivero - (2000) * Gisele Bündchen - (2000 - 2007)Gisele Bundchen, Victoria's Secret Part WaysRetrieved October 28,2007. Victoria's Secret Fashion Show In 1995, Victoria's Secret held its first fashion show; the world press reported it as the "lingerie event of the century". In 1999, the VS company made broadcast history in simultaneously broadcasting a live fashion show online and at Times Square, drawing some 1.5 million viewers, after being advertised during the Super Bowl American football game.Victoria's Secret Webcastwww.fashion-planet.com. accessed 2007-09-22. In 2000, the show was held in Cannes, France during the Cannes Film Festival to raise money for the Cinema Against AIDS charity; it raised $3.5 million. In 2001, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show made its broadcast television debut on ABC, draw millions of viewers and middle-brow controversy; the Federal Communications Commission receives many complaints about each broadcast. In 2004, instead of the annual fashion show, The Angels (Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Gisele Bündchen, Karolina Kurkova, Adriana Lima, and Alessandra Ambrosio) did an Angels Across America Tour, a grassroots campaign for the brand visiting four major cities, New York, Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.http://www.palmbeachpost.com/accent/content/accent/epaper/2004/11/16/1116angels.htmlaccessed 2007-06-13. The 2007 show featured a performance by the Spice Girls and gained prominence as the first American TV debut of the band after their comeback. Kanye West was also supposed to perform at the event, but cancelled his appearance due to his mother's death. Will.i.am was called to perform in his place. The fashion show features mostly lingerie and a multi-million-dollar "Fantasy Bra." In 2006, Victoria's Secret's sub-brand Pink made its debut on the runway. The show has since evolved into a lavish event with elaborate costumed-lingerie, varying music and set design according to the different themes running within the show. The show attracts hundreds of celebrities, and entertainers, with special performers and/or acts every year. The giant angel wings worn by the models, as well as other wings of various forms and sizes such as butterfly, peacock, or devil wings, are Victoria's Secret's fashion trademark. The fashion show is also a meeting of today's supermodels, who are always posing in the middle, after the final walk.http://youtube.com/watch?v=VkqixKyQTNAaccessed 2007-06-13. In the past, most of the clothing exhibited was not for sale, but, in 2005, the show featured clothing for sale in the catalogue. Sub-Brand Victoria's Secret PINK : In July 2004, company executives launched PINK, a lineup of loungewear, sleepwear, and intimate apparel geared mainly towards university and high school students.Victoria's Secret teams up with coeds Alessandra Ambrosio was named the line's first spokesperson. PINK models tour the country at university campuses.http://www.fashionmodeldirectory.com/models/Alessandra_Ambrosioaccessed 2007-06-13. The company markets to youth through MySpace, Facebook, partnerships with MTV, and youth-oriented blogs. The brand has received world wide nomination for the best in the category performance year on year over the last two years. Now, Miranda Kerr is the spokesperson for Victoria's Secret Pink. Basic Store Facts There are 1,003 Victoria's Secret Stores in all which equals 5,126,000 selling square feet. $731 is the average dollar amount of sales that occur per selling square foot. The average store size in selling square feet is 5,111. Lastly, the net sales in millions that the stores gross is $3,700. Media File:Victoria's Secret Fashion Show TV Clip - Behind the Curtain at the Fashion Show|Behind the Curtain File:Victoria's Secret Fashion Show TV Trailer - 2007 Fashion Show Teaser|2007 Fashion Show Teaser References External links *Official website *Victoria's Secret PINK *Video website *http://www.limitedbrands.com/brands/vs/vss/index.jsp Category:Fashion Show Category:Models Category:Lingerie